Are you kidding? This is the greatest job security coup of all time! World wide IT departments will have to start hiring around the clock. Think of all that buggy, crashing, virus invected software that will constantly require fixing. This will make all that Y2k hype seem like a walk in the park LOL!!!

Windows does not run on the mainframe (z/Architecture engine). Windows runs on an Intel blade in a blade center connected to the mainframe with some high-speed links and is managed by the mainframe. The mainframe is still running z/OS, and will have the same performance and reliability characteristics it always had.

How about that, Microsoft almost catching up with Linux in yet another category. How long has it been ince Lunux ran on mainframes? Quite a while, one of the ten fastest computers in the world runs on Linux (keep working on it, MS). I keep thinking of BSoDs, do you know how damned long it takes to boot a mainframe? Will they have to restart the mainframe on Patch Tuesday every month? Reboot it when its antivirus needs new definitions, or Adobe updates Flash?

Mainframes are increasingly seeing competition from clusters of commodity machines running Xen or similar - the cluster is often less good, but at ten percent the cost of the mainframe it doesn't have to be to be tempting to a lot of users. This is an attempt to ensure that anything you can do with cluster of Xen machines, you can do with a mainframe (the converse is not true).

I really see this as clusters taking over a niche where there was no real competition. People would use either mainframes or some kind of distributed solution for that, but that was mostly because it was the best alternative. "If all you have is a hammer, you should treat everything as a nail" and all that.

Of course vendor will fight back, since it will cost them profits. But I simply can't see clusters taking over the real mainframe market.

Contrary to the impression left by the misleading title, this is NOT Windows running on a mainframe. It is Windows running on a blade in a blade center attached to and managed by the mainframe. Using a Windows (or Linux, or AIX) box to perform analytics on mainframe data is not new. What is new is the methods for getting the data from the mainframe, and the fact that the whole thing is managed by the mainframe. And in the mainframe sector, management is huge.

That's the way I read it. It's Windows running on either Intel or AMD. We've had it with the Power Systems (iSeries, AS/400) for years. Other than system management (for a time, it was the only Windows server that could reboot itself when it crashed) the big advantage was disk management. Like a virtual environment, you could add disk at will and the disk performance was considerably higher than a regular Windows server. On Power Systems, each Windows disk drive is striped over all the disk drives which cou

also, the connection to the mainframe from the blade (the zbx with x86-64 processors) is 10 gigabit ethernet. Sure, there are all kinds of software to manage and provide special services such as db2 connectivety, but it's really no different than accessing some windows server over a network.

The ZBX is designed to replace Racks of X86 servers. The shops that want this either already have a big backend Mainframe - for DB2/ADABAS/IMS with midrange Window/Unix servers or they process everything on the mainframe and FTP down to Windows/Unix boxes (last place I worked FTPed Terrabytes every night down from the mainframe to servers).

The ZBX has a high speed bus connection between the Mainframe (Z196/Z114). This speeds up the network lag for large MQSeries systems, FTPs, etc. Also the ZBX is manage

The ZBX has a high speed bus connection between the Mainframe (Z196/Z114). This speeds up the network lag for large MQSeries systems, FTPs, etc. Also the ZBX is managed/upgraded by IBM Customer Engineers so the firmware will be IBM supported. They also integrate the ZBX into the Hardware Management Console to have a single point of control. I believe the ZBX can also take advantage of Server Time Protocol so the mainframe can be used as a time source for all the ZBX blade servers.

It probably also allows the applications to communicate with and share data with the crypto coprocessing facilities available on the z/Enterprise platform.

Lack of knowledge among younger programmers about mainframe programming languages. A client server application can simple be ported to mainframe with the mainframe either playing the roles of the clients and virtualizing or just the server. It allows people to consolidate and migrate Windows server and server applications off the physical hardware.

Mainframe market share is huge (about 3 billion a year in hardware sales) and growing rather quickly, especially since "cloud" and "virtualization" became buzzwords. It's the only part of the high-end non-x86 niche that's really having solid growth right now - SPARC and Itanium have been tumbling for a while, and Power has been more or less flat.

Only one of the last 6 companies I worked for DIDN'T have a mainframe.

Not only does my current company still have a mainframe- we're doing a major software upgrade on it next year.

The mainframe never died.

Mainframe computers were designed around the idea of doing a large volume of repetitive transactions... and mainframes do that very well. If that's what you need done, a mainframe is actually quite a good choice if you can deal with the operational and maintenance costs.

Good point. Medicare, Medicaid, and most (all?) private payers use mainframes for claims adjudication and record keeping; so, that's quite significant.
Mainframes are huge, you just don't read about them as much.

I'm heard that rumor before, but never saw any confirmation about it.I mean, I can see companies doing that for "marketing" reasons, but wouldn't be kind of be a problem for them ?Unless they get a mainframe backend + Intel frontend and call that a cloud, who knows.Do you have any more specific info on this ?

Lots of companies use mainframes still. For tasks that require high availability and high I/O, mainframes are your best bet. While you can run a web server on a mainframe, it isn't utilizing the advantages. Running your financial systems where you get tens or hundreds of thousands concurrent users making transcactions is where mainframes have no equal. Also remember it isn't always an either/or situation. A company can use a farm of web servers to handle the front end while the backend processing is handled by a mainframe.

And like always, today's mainframe will be on your desktop in 20 years.

Well, yesterday's mainframe is on my laptop today. I just installed MVS 3.8j running under Hercules emulation on a MBP this weekend. Seeing the MVS console running in 3270 emulation (via TCP) again on my laptop screen after all these years was really something. Not useful, mind you, but damn cool.

My favorite job of all times was being a mainframe computer operator in the 80s. Once the suits went home, we'd lock the computer room doors, go pass around a fat one in the decollating room, queue up all of the ev

I imagine if you are spending that kind of money and have to support a variety of platforms, including legacy software, why not just blow your load on a single mainframe built for that kind of load, rather than a bunch of blades?

And you don't know what you're talking about, x86 is no more 'serial' than z/Architecture. Both essentially are cache-coherent NUMA on large servers with each CPU having its own personal cache and RAM affinity. If you want to look at less constrained architecture, then check the (now dead) Alpha architecture.

z/OS servers and high-end x86 servers also use the same hardware for high-speed interconnections (actually x86-based servers are usually a couple yea

The summary misses something fairly important, which is that Windows isn't running on the z mainframe itself. This allows Windows blades to be inserted into an external chassis (zBX) and managed by a software component called the Unified Resource Manager.

It's immensely important. Can you imagine the cost of the CPU cycles at IBM's usual mainframe rates? It amazes me that people still tolerate that kind of billing (and yes, I know that you can pay them a couple of hundred thousand extra to get a CPU that doesn't charge you for certain types of loads... I just consider that paying for your own lube).

People tolerate it because it works. Mainframes have compelling performance characteristics, especially for virtualization- or I/O-heavy workloads, and most people don't need a full unlocked processor (a CP.) Linux is the fastest-growing OS on z, and a Linux specialty engine (Integrated Facility for Linux) is relatively cheap compared to the other types of specialty engines. zAAP/zIIP/CP only really matters if you're running z/OS, in which case you're probably a large enough company tat you can afford it, or if you're running z/VSE, in which case you're probably only using one or two processors anyway.

I manage the storage for a mainframe environment for a large retailer. Our busy season is pretty much now through the end of January. Not only are we in a 'holiday freeze', but we procure additional resources from IBM during this season and then IBM takes them back when we no longer need the resources at the end of the holiday season.

On the other hand, my coworkers who work in open systems, install quite a bit new hardware every August/September in preparation for the holiday rush, and then it sits idle c

From what I've seen, what you pay for those extra CPU cycles would pay for the new hardware a few times over just the first year. Admittedly, you don't need to install it or have the floor space, but you do get to keep it.

My guess is that you have not done the math. Any company that has a mainframe will also have a team of bean counters. They will check the cost of those extra cycles to adding hardware and even look at the taxes involved. Of course cloud based solution may works as well but if you already have the code on a mainframe you would have to also look at the cost of the port and testing to make it work.

Dude don't get your knickers in a knot. My post was mostly pro mainframe. I just said that a cloud based solution like Rackcloud or E2C might work as far as an easy to scale system. I also pointed out that a port of mainframe software to such a system would probably be far more expensive than running it on a mainframe.

You are missing an important piece of the puzzle: software. The monthly license charge for mainframe software is proportional to the performance of the machine it is installed on. A single z196 box can have anywhere from 240 MIPS to 53000 MIPS. Mainframe customers can get exactly the performance they need for each situation, saving them tons of money on licensing.

When you want your financial transactions to be 100% correct you will dish out that money. I mean, being a former IBMer, I can't see a lot of value in mainframes outside of the banks. But in the banks I can't see any other solution being as good as IBMs Mainframe.

One of my clients, running two iSeries servers for their ERP, email and a sales Web site, was sold to another company. During the purchase process, they reviewed the cost of IT which, for several years now, has been less than 1% of sales, and that includes office supplies! This is for servers without IBM support and without any maintenance support (we buy spare parts when needed). Please don't try that with Windows! It simply won't work.

The purchase went through and the old owners are very happy with me ri

Agreed. That sort of service is available for PC hardware, but the costs involved are stupendous (compared to the cost of the machines). It is pretty hard to justify spending $2000 a year for EVERY x86 server you own to get JUST hardware support, when you can lease a $1M+ machine for $85,000 a month that comes with total support and a guy that lives in your server room at your beck and call. Seems like a lot, but when you realize that means you don't have to refresh servers or employ an army of tech monk

From the article: "Make that Windows right next to the mainframe -- i.e., running on the zEnterprise BladeCenter Extension (zBX), the mainframe/open systems sidecar...First, Windows-in-a-zBX isn't Windows-in-zVM. Still less is it Windows running in a special processor, a la IBM's Integrated Facility for Linux (IFL). So Windows won't be running on non-x64 -- i.e., Big Iron -- CMOS. Nevertheless, customers will be able to manage Windows from their zEnterprise 196 or zEnterprise 114 mainframes...

LOL!!! Now IBM will be on the endless Microsoft virus/buggy money train. I think I will buy some IBM stock. This could also put thousands of unemployed programers to work. Constant buggy upgrades, crashing systems, crappy code etc... IBM's revenue should jump 10 fold.

LOL!!! Now IBM will be on the endless Microsoft virus/buggy money train. I think I will buy some IBM stock. This could also put thousands of unemployed programers to work. Constant buggy upgrades, crashing systems, crappy code etc... IBM's revenue should jump 10 fold.

Not so much IBM's worry - but that of any customer who goes that route.

Bit like replacing a wheel on your car by welding a truck in place - one facing the other direction.

Reading through the thick IBM-specific jargon, zBX is actually a blade server management system that places blade servers on a private network connected to the mainframe, with the mainframe managing them. It supports POWER7 (FYI POWER is a "big cousin" to the PowerPC chip) and IBM System x (x86-based) blades.

So, in actuality, this is Windows running on an x86 box, with the mainframe managing it -- it is not like mainframe Linux where Linux is truly running on the m

Hardly marginalized. It's doing what it has always done best, which is push lots of data around with raw processing power. Just because you can't see them doesn't mean they aren't there humming away crunching data. If you use an ATM, charge something to a credit card, or receive your pay I guarantee you there is a mainframe at the end of that transaction.

The need for mainframe services never went away, the world just built a whole new computer s

Hardly marginalized. It's doing what it has always done best, which is push lots of data around with raw processing power. Just because you can't see them doesn't mean they aren't there humming away crunching data. If you use an ATM, charge something to a credit card, or receive your pay I guarantee you there is a mainframe at the end of that transaction.

The need for mainframe services never went away, the world just built a whole new computer segment separate from them for new things.

Everywhere I have worked the mainframes have yielded to blade servers, save one - where they are running some horrible old frankenstein COBOL system in a virtual HP 3000 environment (which could possibly be running on a blade by now, for all I know.)

an HP 3000 is a "minicomputer" (in the jargon of the 70s to early 90s) that runs MPE/IX (somewhat unix-like). You just worked at a place where silly people called any server that wasn't a PC a "mainframe". I see that often in my job, manufacturing plants still running AS/400 and calling it a "mainframe", when it's just what was called at the time a "mid-range computer". I've seen Unix microcomputers and Vax called mainframes too, even DEC tried to advertise its big Vax 10000 as a "Vax mainframe", but

NT was going to be ported to everything. MIPS, DEC Alpha (No love for you VAX people), and the IBM Mainframe.It made it onto the Alpha, I think. Sort of. Now Windows is brought in to the mainframe, but not as a conqueror displacing System/360. It is brought in wearing chains, in a cage, by System/360's grandson.

In the (early?) 90's I saw a Dec Alpha laptop running NT at Comdex. Absolutely awesome laptop. Sadly it never made it to production.

I do know of an Alpha in production: my wife's observatory has two Alpha's running VMS and Lisp to control the telescope motors. They're 100% reliable, but they're also now looking in to replacing them as it's not exactly a maintainable system.

NT was going to be ported to everything. MIPS, DEC Alpha (No love for you VAX people), and the IBM Mainframe.
It made it onto the Alpha, I think. Sort of. Now Windows is brought in to the mainframe, but not as a conqueror displacing System/360. It is brought in wearing chains, in a cage, by System/360's grandson.

IIRC it was officially available at one point or another for Alpha and MIPS R4000. A PowerPC port (for IBM PPC machines, not Macs) was in the works but I'm not sure it was ever released...? Of course, if you count NT-derived OSes that came after the one actually called "Windows NT", then there's also Itanium, and soon to be ARM.

As many have said, this is Windows on a blade, in a frame that is part of the mainframe box

It will most benefit Windows-based applications which access mainframe things on the back end (such as GUI.Net apps with DB2), because the servers are attached through a high-speed internal network.

The system management tool for the hardware will provide unified management of the z/box and the blades, which will help some folk.

There actually was a "Windows" implementation on the mainframe at one time, Bristol had ported Wind/U (a Windows API implementation) to z/OS Unix Systems Services - but after some pushback from Microsoft I believe their license to do so was revoked.

Fisher-Price announced today that they will be producing a utility pickup vehicle. It will ship with a sonic lifeform identification unit, and a string-activated audible warning system. The power plant will be an aero-plastic bobble-bed reactor with a Kinetic Inductance Drive transmission and it will run on injection-molded run-flat composite tire-wheels.

Microsoft should know the principle of network externals better than anyone. In computing you often can't dethrone the status quo with a better product, much less an inferior one (and I'm going to guess the Windows solution is inferior in this case if, for no other reason, lack of access to the source code). It is this principle that keeps Windows alive on the desktop in the face of better solutions - and it is what allowed IE to hang on as long as it did.

Microsoft would be better served trying to make some presence on the phone market before it is too late. iPhone and Android are already entrenched to the point that where phones a traditional market Microsoft would be utterly doomed. But they get a saving grace in that phone contracts and devices tend to rotate about once every 2 years. That rapid rotation might give them a chance, otherwise they are shackled to their desktop market - a market that is now just as irrelevant to the future as the mainframe market that IBM lorded over the computing world with back in the 1980's, until Microsoft themselves dethroned Big Blue.

This doomed foray into big iron isn't any more likely to succeed now than it was in the 1980's. IBM has most of the share and none of the players in the field want to have anything to do with Microsoft. These machines are being used by engineers who want total control over the hardware they own and expect nothing less - which is why Linux is the dominant OS and the other major OS'es are open source. I doubt Microsoft really even understands the market they are trying to enter. On the whole its a waste of their time and resources.

No, the reason is that some apps require Windows middleware between the users and the mainframe. Instead of having the middleware outside the mainframe, now it is sort of bolted onto the side of it. This isn't Microsoft trying to gain marketshare, it is IBM trying to give a better value to its customers. They are saying "you are stuck with these Windows boxes, right? Instead of paying someone else for management services and software, why not pay us?"

I've been working on Unisys mainframes/Enterprise servers for years (decades...) and they run their OS on top on a "hardened" Windows server (2008 on the latest). I never get to that level (thank god) and it's the poor engineers who fiddle with it.

And it causes problems - Windows device drivers aren't as flexible as Unisys ones. And for that reason the latest Unisys Clearpaths have lost the Microsoft layer entirely - run on Firmware that runs on the chips. Safer, more controllable, in-house. So, IBM

What does any of that have to do with this article? This has zero to do with a mainframe running (or, god forbid, ON) Windows. This is about giving a Windows server a high-speed, secure, interconnect to mainframe data (DB2, IMS, etc), and having the mainframe provide management of the Windows blade.

Seriously, this is like announcing an iPod dock for MGB motor cars (only arguably less useful). It doesn't hold interest for that many people and the audience that it potentially COULD affect are not likely to install it...

it's just a way of having very high speed 10 gig net to a blade enclosure with Windows on a x86 blade (and also possibly AIX on another variant of the blades with PPC), also with software to manage windows and provide some services. People already run multi-tier architectures that include windows middleware or front ends as well as mainframes. not an uncommon scenario at all. Heck, I know of state goverment departments that run novell netware still that talk to mainframes

I also know of those state governments! It is so disappointing to see Netware fail. They were SO good at making large networks maintainable and relatively secure. There are still plenty of offices that run Netware 5.1 on Proliant 3000 and 6500 machines, and the file server performance is NOT the bottleneck. Usually it's the WAN connection or the stupid Windows boxes. They are switching away from Novell slowly, and every time they pull out a cruddy old Netware box and put in a big fancy Windows box, thin

not really true, Hercules emulator can run Z/OS (and Z/VM and Z/VSE and Z/TPF) very nicely and with enough performance (200+ mainframe MIPS per core on high-end x86-64 processors) to do useful work on any x86 or x86-64 server including blades, but IBM normally doesn't allow that by license.